In a Lingua Franca post a few weeks ago, I needed to use the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to represent the different pronunciations of the English word People still talk about speech sounds ...

BENGALURU: When Tanuja watched her son, a kindergartner, struggling to read English she decided to enrol him for phonetics classes. “They would teach him the sound of each letter in the English ...

Standing in front of the cashier in the take-out line, you tell them your name so you can pick up that pizza you called in 20 minutes ago. The confused cashier tells you, “Hmm, I don’t have an order ...

Backers of a universal alphabet say it will make pronunciation easy and foster international understanding. But can phonetic spelling systems really smooth the path to world peace? You are in Vietnam ...